We had relatives, food, and three kinds of dip because I was unwary and said, sure, I'll go with you to Central Market to get those last few things and there was brie.

Uninteresting Notes

1.) Why does Central Market hate me and rearrange their coffee every time I go in there? I am not ashamed of my coffee preferences, but I am conscious of the fact that in general, my economic class does not say shit like, "No, not the decaf free-trade organic Sumatran with the full body and high acid; I mean the regular free-trade organic Sumatran low-acid, shade-grown, full caffeine." I sound like a parody from Family Guy. It's not that I am mocking people who are environmentally aware, but I feel like a very specialized afterschool special for the Montessori crowd whose parents went very green five years ago and talk about their composting strategies.

If you've never been to Central Market, it's the definition of how the future saw the working class and realized there was a market here for them: it's an upscale grocery store that is aware that its real target audience is a.) people who feel they really need to feel more socially aware of their food in a vague way due to their kids growing up here and b.) want to feel they are helping the environment and being socially conscious while c.) knowing shit about it and there is little hope we have any chance of catching up with Austin's level of Go Green or Die (in an environmentally friendly way) In a Fire, so for fuck's sake, make it easy on us, okay? It's nice for those of us who are, well, me, who want to be and yet are sublimely aware we kind of fail at that kind of thing. I don't want to say there's a pervasive sense of ironic shopping going on, but there is the general feeling that we're there because Whole Foods pissed us off and hurt our feelings and smelled really, really bad, but Central Market likes us and doesn't mind that right after this the kids are getting Kentucky Fried Chicken for dinner.

I'd been fine in produce, okay with the bread section (barely), but got to the olive/dip/salsa bar and broke entirely and with a vengeance. Which is how I ended up with love dip (pink, delicious), asparagus, spinach and cheese (sell soul, worth it) and an orangish one that involved bacon. The weighing machine was working but the labeler was out of ink, so in a fit of shopping-mania I took pictures of the weight/price display for the cashiers before my mother gently took my phone and the nice men in the fresh food area took the dips from me warily and got them weighed and labeled. I'm want to say it would have occurred to me to turn and see them signaling that they would do this, but that would be a dirty lie. We walked by cheese and the brie was right there and I may or may not have been clutching a baguette and six tangerines (I lied about making it through produce and breads, fine) and brie requires jam, and yeah. So I was already fucked by the time I made it to coffee.

(Note: there is no such thing as tangerine jam, jelly, preserves, or compote. There's jalapeno all of those, boisonberry, goddamn pepper, but not tangerine. Why?)

The coffee area is also the tea and free-range pantry section, where you can dip your own flour, granola, and jelly beans into recycled paper bags, weigh and price right there. There's also a huge spice area. It's nice and kind of relaxing; the aisles are wide and most of us are wandering around feeling in general good, right up until the coffee, which spans part of the back wall and the ends of the aisles and is organized by the Mayan calendar, the revised Astrology charts, or the moon cycles in turn, so if you liked the third coffee to the left, you'd better know more than it was dark and strong. I've never once seen the same coffee in the same place twice, and occasionally, someone I assume new and really excited reads the coffee summary and gets really determined that the name be super accurate or someone older and realistic decides minimalist naming is key. Neither ends well. There used to be a label color pattern (guess what green text meant?) but they abandoned that due to Pluto being de-planeted, I assume, so now green text just means they're protesting that, or possibly the labeling machine was green-text only this month.

Then they did this thing where all the coffee of the really expensive variety gets into giant jars and is in a shady corner--no idea about this one--on the other side of the tea, behind the counter, with a sharp-eyed tea expert-light to watch while you stare at Kona because they changed the name of your Sumatran again and you don't know what to do and may in a fit of frustration just get some of that even though you might need to quickly do a balance transfer to afford it.

(You'd think this would be logical, except the entire store is an exercise in the trust system for picking and weighing and pricing your own produce, free-range pantry, and various items. Yes, the kona and blue mountain are hideously expensive, but like, so are the organics over to the left and they aren't jarred and guarded, so come on. The entire point of the store is to make those of us who usually get snubbed at high end stores feel comfortable and not like we're going to make off with your special organic gluten-free soy milk-made cheese bread to our gas-guzzling cars with some Miller Lite in the back cackling about getting away with it. And McDonalds.)

Clutching my paper bag (brown, recycled), I started at the far left and just went container to container, getting slowly more desperate as there was neither order nor pattern nor even like, reason. Dark roast French was by the Peruvian shade-grown light-acid aromatic and the deep nutty Mexican organic with chocolate and nut notes. Decaf was everywhere and never seemed to end. Random flavored coffees were mixed with decafs, medium roasts danced with the breakfast blends, lambs and lions fucked on aisle three. It was all wrong and weirdly hypnotizing and somewhere my mother was once again thinking why she ever came here with me, ever. Finally I ended up staring at the only section that had some kind of pattern, which seemed to be Countries I Didn't Know Grew Coffee in Quantities Sufficient to Be Sold Internationally, where we started with Mexican to all the way to the Galapagos Islands (they have giant turtles, right?). Stuck in the middle was my Sumatran (new fucking name) that I recognized pathetically by the pattern of words on the description. The words "free trade" were missing, but what-the-fuck-ever, it's not decaf and maybe this section was all that? IDEK. I also grabbed the Galapagos in blind gratitude, because I think I had it before and it was delicious. And also because I'm a compulsive coffee-buyer and I can't buy just one. And I love turtles. So there.

2.) I finally got the bluray thing working on my server by dint of turkey-induced madness and strangely enough, what I'd been wondering about for a while.

Ubuntu Server 10.10's beauty is in the fact it runs light and fast. I love command line and running headless, but fact; there are some things that require a GUI, even a simple one, or they simply do not work correctly. I finally gave in and installed ubuntu desktop and ssh'ed into it using a VPN viewer, but that took a lot of resources and did some questionable things like when the desktop timed out, it would lock me out and I was back at command line until I restarted the desktop. Over and over. Then ubuntu had a common problem with something called splashy not completely installing and it was a dark journey.

Then I found out that I could use ssh and X Windows to open particular programs that need a GUI directly on my laptop to run commands that wouldn't use my computers' processor or bandwidth to do. And suddenly I could watch blurays from my server, theoretically. I could also rip them and watch them, in actuality, but streaming that level of data was unsurprisingly slow.

But I was working on that and all was puppies and roses and yes, I finally can do this.

Five minutes later, dreamatdrew called and said "I need the IP because I'm not home and what did you do?"

Funny story.

I'd installed MythTV (google it, I can't even explain) and it was having issues and fails with some of the processes and configurations, so I decided to uninstall it with Aptitude, which is a neat place to go and look at packages and programs you might want and whatnot. It's also really not a good place, because it is not Windows and takes you very literally. I went there to uninstall MythTV and all related dependencies.

From what I can work out, this is what happened:

I went to installed packages and scrolled down to MythTV and hit g to uninstall it. It wouldn't accept it--for some reason--so I went to the menu and agreed to go to root and then went back, highlighted, and hit uninstall. I have to do this every time with Aptitude, so that was not new.

Suddenly, I got a warning that didn't make sense about uninstalling a lot of shit that looked necessary, like my system.. I said no, and no again, and no again, then I thought I canceled the whole thing out, exited, and logged back in to try again. I went back to MythTV, found it, hit g, and suddenly, the window became scrolling madness.

Aptitude does not know 'cancel', as it turns out. And it remembered that last time, I said, uninstall everything. Potentially, when I highlighted, I highlighted everything I had installed.

For the next hour, I watched, fascinated, as my entire operating system was systematically uninstalled and purged while dreamatdrew said things like "I can't log in" and "Why did you do this?" and "What the hell?" while narrating to Jack in the background (who God help me does tech support, of course, so there might have been hysterical laughter going on) until the only things left were the boot section and some of home before the window died and Watson vanished.

Horace, the drive with all my media, is presumably safe, since it shouldn't have been affected by an OS purge, and last I checked was just inoperable but all data was still there. Frankly, I haven't gone to check again; I'm am thinking that the real difference between linux and windows is while windows might treat you like an idiot, linux knows you are and likes to watch you die.

On the bright side, I've reinstalled ubuntu server so many times I could do it in my sleep and now I actually know which programs I need and which ones I don't and cause problems. When I get around to doing it, which I haven't, because my deep sense of betrayal is too great, and um, I slept super late.

4.) Tonight is the next great server install. Earlier this week my router was under DoS from bots and while telling madelyn about it and reading the logs while color coordinating them and whirlwinding through my securities and ports, she was thoughtful before mentioning she was glad I was enjoying myself so much. Last night, after a long pause, dreamatdrew told me he was glad I was having so much fun.

I can't lie; if Horace still has my media okay? I don't even care. This is fantastic. I'm not bored. I don't foresee in the near future I will be. What could be better than that?

Quotes

If you don't send me feedback, I will sob uncontrollably for hours on end, until finally, in a fit of depression, I slash my wrists and bleed out on the bathroom floor. My death will be on your heads. Murderers.--unknown, BTS list

That's why he goes bad, you know -- all the good people hit him on the head or try to shoot him and constantly mistrust him, while there's this vast cohort of minions saying, We wouldn't hurt you, Lex, and we'll give you power and greatness and oh so much sex...

Wow. That was scary. Lex is like Jesus in the desert.--pricklyelf on why Lex goes bad

Obi-Wan has a sort of desperate, pathetic patience in this movie. You can just see it in his eyes: "My padawan is a psychopath, and no one will believe me; I'm barely keeping him under control and expect to wake up any night now to find him standing over my bed with a knife!"--Teague reviewing "Star Wars: Attack of the Clones"

Beth: god, why do i have so many beads?Jenn: Because you are an addict.Jenn: There are twelve step programs for this.Beth: i dunno they'd work, might have to go straight for the electroshock.Jenn: I'm not sure that helps with bead addiction.Beth: i was thinking more to demagnitize my credit card.--AIM, 12/24/2003

I could rape a goat and it will DIE PRETTIER than they write.--AIM, anonymous, 2/17/2004

In medical billing there is a diagnosis code for someone who commits suicide by sea anenemoe.--AIM, silverkyst, 3/25/2004

Anonymous: sorry. i just wanted to tell you how much i liked you. i'd like to take this to a higher level if you're willingEleveninches: By higher level I hope you mean email.--LJ, 4/2/2004

silverkyst: I need to not be taking molecular genetics.silverkyst: though, as a sidenote, I did learn how to eviscerate a fruit fly larvae by pulling it's mouth out by it's mouthparts today.silverkyst: I'm just nowhere near competent in the subject material to be taking it.Jenn: I'd like to thank you for that image.--AIM, 1/25/2005

You know, if obi-wan had just disciplined the boy *properly* we wouldn't be having these problems. Can't you just see yoda? "Take him in hand, you must. The true Force, you must show him."--LJ, Issaro, on spanking Anakin in his formative years, 3/15/2005

Aside from the fact that one person should never go near another with a penis, a bottle of body wash, and a hopeful expression...--LJ, Summerfling, on shower sex, 7/22/2005

It's weird, after you get used to the affection you get from a rabbit, it's like any other BDSM relationship. Only without the sex and hot chicks in leather corsets wielding floggers. You'll grow to like it.--LJ, revelininsanity, on my relationship with my rabbit, 2/7/2006

Smudged upon the near horizon, lapine shadows in the mist. Like a doomsday vision from Watership Down, the bunny intervention approaches.--LJ, cpt_untouchable, on my addition of The Fourth Bunny, 4/13/2006

Rule 3. Chemistry is kind of like bondage. Some people like it, some people like reading about or watching other people doing it, and a large number of people's reaction to actually doing the serious stuff is to recoil in horror.--LJ, deadlychameleon, on class, 9/1/2007

If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then Fan Fiction is John Cusack standing outside your house with a boombox.-- Tweeted by JRDSkinner